One of our finest actresses, Miranda Richardson, in a dazzling triple role in the disquieting psychological character study Spider (2002, David Cronenberg; pictured with Gabriel Byrne and Bradley Hall). Some critical context:
“A triumph of both quality and quantity, Richardson gives a nightmarish triptych of performances as, alternately, the mother of Ralph Fiennes’s mentally hollowed protagonist, his father’s mistress and his present-day landlady, vividly embodying an entire, terrorising wall of femininity in his psyche. Favored for the Best Actress award at Cannes, she emerged from the festival with no prize, but a cloud of Oscar buzz that vanished into thin air. A shame; it’s her best screen work.” — Guy Lodge, Hitfix(August 2012)
“This slow but brilliantly sustained journey into madness is fronted by a remarkable performance from Ralph Fiennes and superb backup from Miranda Richardson in a triple role… Richardson shows her range, depicting Mrs. Cleg as a woman sadly hanging onto hope, still trying to pretend she has some kind of satisfying family life despite her errant husband’s surliness; her Yvonne is trashy, vulgar, graceless and totally without morals, in the latter scenes injecting that same brassy sexuality into Mrs. Wilkinson’s cold authoritarian manner.” — David Rooney, Variety (May 2002)
I’ve never watched Quantum Leap before, but I imagine it’s like this but less horrific. It’s also a little bit like if Being John Malkovich (1999) was about brain hacking assassins and wasn’t a comedy.
This was written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg, son of David Cronenberg who is also the father of body horror. So this was made by body horror’s brother. Body horror makes some cute cameos here.
The cast was great: Andrea Riseborough (AKA Mandy from Mandy (2018)), Jennifer Jason Leigh (being her lovely weird self), Christopher Abbott (one of the guys from Girls), Sean Bean (!), and Rossif Sutherland (Donald Sutherland’s OTHER actor son).
I took a break during the middle of this to watch the music video for Rob Zombie’s “Dragula” for no particular reason.
The plot centres around a tech company called ZOOTHROO which uses people’s webcams to spy on what kind of window coverings they have. Mostly they just see meat curtains.
Lots of vaping.
I enjoyed this despite all the blood and brain puncturing. It is a beautifully shot movie.
